The Weaver of Death
The woman was different from any Nameless I had encountered before.
I noticed the bone accessories and the ancient relics hanging from her belt. She held a staff topped with a bleached skull.
A necromancer.
Necromancy was a forbidden art across the entire continent. Those who practiced it were said to fall into madness sooner or later.
Every scrap of teaching and information regarding the dark craft had been burned or buried centuries ago. In my past life, every necromancer I saw was a raving lunatic. They only craved violence and lacked any sense of reality or strategy.
The undead they commanded attacked without any care for their own lives. They were predictable because they were driven only by hunger and the commands of their masters.
But this woman was different. The number of undead she summoned suggested that she had practiced the dark art many times, yet she hadn’t fallen prey to the madness yet. She was calm and calculating.
She stood in the middle of the blizzard as if the wind couldn't touch her. She had set a perfect trap for us.
She had used the avalanche as a shroud to hide her presence. I hated to admit it but Elara had saved my life just now.
If she hadn't struck first, I might have been the one with a hole in my head. I looked at the body of the man she had killed.
It was a cold reminder of how close I had come to dying again.
Questions swirled in my mind like the snow around us. Why did she do it. Why would she save the man she was destined to kill.
Why would she try to ruin the plan of someone who should be her ally. Wouldn't the necromancer be her colleague if she was truly a member of the Nameless Order.
The memory of the black steel dagger in my heart felt like it was throbbing again. I looked at the way Elara held herself.
She looked ready to kill anything that moved.
Dozens of undead began to claw their way out of the snow around us. Their eyes glowed with a sickly pale light.
Some were skeletal while others still had frozen flesh hanging from their bones. I had no time to think.
Elara was staring furiously at the woman in the tattered robes. Her grip on the black steel dagger was so tight her knuckles were turning white.
"Get a hold of yourself and look around" I said.
I moved until my back met hers. The heat from her body was the only thing cutting through the unnatural chill of the mountain.
She stiffened for a second then relaxed. She understood I was covering her blind spot.
Even though I didn't trust her I knew we wouldn't survive this alone. The undead were forming a circle.
They were closing in with a slow and rhythmic pace.
"That necromancer doesn't look like a normal lunatic" I muttered. "We need a plan."
An undead wearing imperial knight armour lunged at me. I ducked and drove my shoulder into its chest before taking its head off with a clean swing of my blade.
The metal of my sword rang against its decaying armour. The head rolled into the snow.
Its eyes didn't stop glowing. It kept snapping its jaws even as it lay in the drift.
"Killing the minions won't help us" Elara said.
She kicked an undead knight in the chest. It stumbled back into the deep snow.
Before it could recover, she was on top of it. She drove the black dagger through the eye slit of its helmet.
There was a faint hiss of magic as the light in its eyes died out. With a fluid motion she grabbed the longsword from its dying grip.
She discarded the dagger for a moment and tested the weight of the steel. She looked like a natural warrior despite her noble upbringing.
"We need to push through and kill the necromancer first" she added.
I didn't want to do it but I had to trust my back to this woman for now.
If she wanted me dead, she could have left me to freeze in the cave while I was unconscious. The look on her face when she saw the necromancer was genuine.
It was a look of pure loathing. She really had no idea what was going on here.
These two clearly didn't get along. Or perhaps she was just a better actress than I ever gave her credit for.
I kept my doubts locked away for the moment.
"Charge her" she commanded. "I will cover you."
She pulled the stolen sword closer to her chest and held it straight. She closed her eyes for a heartbeat.
I felt the air grow heavy. The metal of her sword began to glow with golden flames.
They weren't like normal flames. They were bright and looked almost divine.
It was a power that felt alien in this frozen hell.
She opened her eyes and sliced the necks of two undead approaching from the front.
The golden flames didn't just cut them. The fire swallowed their whole bodies and turned them to ash in seconds.
The sound of their screams wasn't human. It was the sound of magic burning away the rot.
The snow beneath them turned to steam as the golden flames consumed them.
She charged forward into the mass of rotting flesh. I stayed right behind her.
I moved like a shadow taking care of every undead that tried to run at her from the sides.
My movements were sharp and calculated. I didn't waste a single swing.
Every time a blade came near her, I was there to parry it. My heart was pounding against my ribs but my hands were steady.
I felt the gravity of the situation pressing down on me. I focused on the rhythm of the blades and the sound of her breathing.
We were getting close to the woman with the staff. She didn't look afraid.
She watched us with a bored expression as if we were children playing a game. She lifted her staff high and stomped it down on the ground.
The ground beneath us groaned and cracked.
Then she reached up and crushed the skull on top of the staff with her bare hand.
The bone shattered into dust and a black mist began to seep from her fingers.
A massive shape erupted from beneath the snow. A giant high orc.
Its skin was grey and frozen but its muscles were still thick. It’s body looked as if it had been stitched together. It looked grotesque.
Its eyes were huge orbs of green light.
The necromancer laughed and moved back into the darkness to give the beast space. She wanted to see if we could handle her creation.
"Go for its head" I shouted. "I will distract it."
We split up. I ran ahead and dove between the orc's legs.
I slashed at its legs and then slid behind it. I felt the resistance of the frozen flesh as I cut deep into its tendons.
I knew the undead orc couldn't feel any pain. It was a puppet of meat and bone after all.
But if I cut enough of it, the orc will fall.
The creature swung a massive club made of frozen wood and iron. It smashed into the spot where I had been standing a second ago.
The ground shattered into a thousand pieces.
I kept moving. I cut the other leg.
I was a fly buzzing around a giant but a fly with a very sharp sting. Every time it tried to turn I was already gone.
I was cutting away the anchor points of its strength.
I was carving through dead muscle and bone until the limb began to fail.
The beast let out a low vibration that shook my bones. It was trying to find me in the storm but I was too fast.
While I worked on making the giant fall, Elara was a whirlwind of gold.
She protected me from the smaller undead that tried to swarm my back.
She was concentrating the golden flames onto her sword. The blade stopped looking like metal.
It started looking like a solid beam of light.
The heat coming from her was so intense it was melting the snow around her.
It was a display of power that made my skin crawl. It was beautiful and terrifying all at once.
I cut the orc's tendons one last time.
The massive weight of the creature shifted. It started tumbling down toward its knees.
It let out a soundless roar as it lost its balance. It reached out to grab me but I rolled away just in time.
"Now" I screamed.
Elara didn't hesitate.
She ran toward the falling beast and leapt. She soared through the air with a grace that defied the wind.
She landed directly on the orc's head. She reversed her grip and drove the glowing sword deep into its skull.
"Release."
A pillar of light erupted from the orc's head. It shot up into the dark sky and blinded me for a moment.
When the light faded there was nothing left of the orc's upper body. Not even ashes remained.
The snow around the impact site had turned to steam.
I let out a sigh of relief and looked at her. She gave me a thumbs up.
I chuckled a bit and walked towards her.
That’s when the necromancer appeared again.
She emerged silently from the dark while clapping her hands. The sound was thin and mocking against the wind.
We stared at her with our weapons ready. We were breathing hard.
The cold was starting to seep back into our bones now that the golden light was fading.
My lungs burned with every breath of the freezing air. My muscles were beginning to ache from the sudden burst of violence.
She didn't speak. She just pointed upwards.
We hadn't seen them before because of the blizzard.
But the lingering light from Elara's attack revealed them.
A pack of undead frost vultures were circling right above us. Their wings were half torn and their beaks looked like rusted iron.
They were huge creatures that thrived in the high altitudes of the mountains. There were dozens of them.
They began to dive with their talons extended.
The woman in the tattered robes was laughing.
